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Cathy Horyn answers reader's questions. I only posted the ones I found interesting but the rest are here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/bu...kthetimes.html
Fashion Shows and the Critic's Focus
Q. What aspects of a fashion show do you focus on mainly in order to write its review?
— Cándida Ledo
A. Love this question. There's a range of different considerations depending on the house and the designer. With an established designer who has a signature look and a dedicated following, I want to see how he adapts his style to current attitudes about dressing. He's not going to significantly change his look from season to season, nor should he, but is he up-to-date with fabrics, or more casual pieces? Also, I think it's good to ask a designer who makes high-quality clothes if he is really pushing himself or simply meeting the expectations of stores and clients. Oscar de la Renta makes beautiful, well-crafted clothes, but six months ago, in a review of his spring collection, I wrote that some of the wow factor was gone. He has such a strong business and clear identity, I felt he could afford to dazzle people with more exceptional pieces.
Designers like Miuccia Prada, Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga and Marc Jacobs receive a different kind of scrutiny. They're more interested in expressing an idea or creating a fashion that reflects the moment. They function a bit as anthropologists, and a bit as rebels going against the status quo, especially their own. And there are sometimes autobiographical aspects to their clothes. Last season, Jacobs did a brilliant show that evoked the 1930s, Broadway, a black aesthetic. The collection was ambitious, and the themes resonated with a lot of observers. This time, there wasn't a strong emotional appeal in the 80s references or, it seemed to me, a contemporary justification for them.
With relatively new designers, I tend to focus on more fundamental qualities. Do the clothes fit? Does the designer have a sense of proportion, or at least an interesting proportion to offer? Is he or she all surface treatment without a solid foundation in construction and cut? I would love to see a young designer in this extremely harsh economy recognize that the market for expensive clothes is going to be limited, and so attempt to be innovative with more common, less expensive fabrics.
Is Fashion Relevant as an Art Form?
Q. Do you think fashion remains relevant as an art form today when so much of the current designs are recycled from decades past, and commercial marketing machines play such a pivotal role in managing and manufacturing consumers' tastes and demands?
— M. Slawson
A. This is a large question. First of all, I'm not sure that fashion is an art form. One can say that a handful of designers in the world are extraordinarily innovative and approach their work like an artist, using a design to make us see something unique and maybe profound about the contemporary world. I would put Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in that category. So would many designers. She typically gives her pattern-makers in Tokyo very vague instructions, and then allows them to find their way until she is satisfied. Because she has built a company with additional lines, for knits, shirts and so forth, Kawakubo has the liberty to express herself as she likes with her main collection. That's one approach to fashion.
It's true that marketing has played an enormous role in determining our tastes and buying habits in the past decade. Gucci and Prada were largely known as suppliers of leathergoods and luggage until Tom Ford and Miuccia Prada, respectively, put an emphasis on clothing and, at the same time, provocative advertisements. Prada used to give away new handbags to some editors when they arrived in Milan, and of course then you'd see the bags being carried all over town and at the other shows, reinforcing the impression that the thing was coveted. And designers have been using socialites and celebrities as sandwich boards for decades; it isn't a new practice, though it has become more widespread because of the number of red-carpet events and the media attention that they receive. Every day we buy into the notion that a celebrity gives value and glamour to a product, and that's not likely to change. Witness the number of celebrities doing dress labels — Victoria Beckham, Beyonce, Gwen Stefani. Michelle Obama's choice of certain designers amounts to an endorsement, even if her prime interest is to look attractive and appropriate.
Is fashion less relevant today because designers revive older styles, and sometimes shamelessly poach another designer's look? I think the answer depends a great deal on the skills and intent of the designer. Marc Jacobs has taken a postmodern approach to design, appropriating elements of other designers — Yohji Yamamoto, for instance — and blending them with his own ideas. Many contemporary artists do the same thing, as Jacobs frequently points out. With more sophistication and financial resources for staging and fabrics, he has become quite successful with this approach. In a powerful, controversial show in the fall of 2007, he attempted to address the role of celebrity in our culture — the way the media presents them, the public's sometimes uncritical adoration and consumption of celebrities as commodities. He followed up with an advertising campaign by Juergen Teller that showed Victoria Beckham spilling out of a Marc Jacobs shopping bag.
I think Jacobs makes us see something in a different way. I'm always interested to see how Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga interprets the house's legacy in the context of today and the availability of new materials. However, many of us who see a lot of fashion shows are aware that the standards are slipping and that there is a lot of blatent, mindless copying going on. As you can see, it's a fascinating topic for a longer discussion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/bu...kthetimes.html
Fashion Shows and the Critic's Focus
Q. What aspects of a fashion show do you focus on mainly in order to write its review?
— Cándida Ledo
A. Love this question. There's a range of different considerations depending on the house and the designer. With an established designer who has a signature look and a dedicated following, I want to see how he adapts his style to current attitudes about dressing. He's not going to significantly change his look from season to season, nor should he, but is he up-to-date with fabrics, or more casual pieces? Also, I think it's good to ask a designer who makes high-quality clothes if he is really pushing himself or simply meeting the expectations of stores and clients. Oscar de la Renta makes beautiful, well-crafted clothes, but six months ago, in a review of his spring collection, I wrote that some of the wow factor was gone. He has such a strong business and clear identity, I felt he could afford to dazzle people with more exceptional pieces.
Designers like Miuccia Prada, Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga and Marc Jacobs receive a different kind of scrutiny. They're more interested in expressing an idea or creating a fashion that reflects the moment. They function a bit as anthropologists, and a bit as rebels going against the status quo, especially their own. And there are sometimes autobiographical aspects to their clothes. Last season, Jacobs did a brilliant show that evoked the 1930s, Broadway, a black aesthetic. The collection was ambitious, and the themes resonated with a lot of observers. This time, there wasn't a strong emotional appeal in the 80s references or, it seemed to me, a contemporary justification for them.
With relatively new designers, I tend to focus on more fundamental qualities. Do the clothes fit? Does the designer have a sense of proportion, or at least an interesting proportion to offer? Is he or she all surface treatment without a solid foundation in construction and cut? I would love to see a young designer in this extremely harsh economy recognize that the market for expensive clothes is going to be limited, and so attempt to be innovative with more common, less expensive fabrics.
Is Fashion Relevant as an Art Form?
Q. Do you think fashion remains relevant as an art form today when so much of the current designs are recycled from decades past, and commercial marketing machines play such a pivotal role in managing and manufacturing consumers' tastes and demands?
— M. Slawson
A. This is a large question. First of all, I'm not sure that fashion is an art form. One can say that a handful of designers in the world are extraordinarily innovative and approach their work like an artist, using a design to make us see something unique and maybe profound about the contemporary world. I would put Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in that category. So would many designers. She typically gives her pattern-makers in Tokyo very vague instructions, and then allows them to find their way until she is satisfied. Because she has built a company with additional lines, for knits, shirts and so forth, Kawakubo has the liberty to express herself as she likes with her main collection. That's one approach to fashion.
It's true that marketing has played an enormous role in determining our tastes and buying habits in the past decade. Gucci and Prada were largely known as suppliers of leathergoods and luggage until Tom Ford and Miuccia Prada, respectively, put an emphasis on clothing and, at the same time, provocative advertisements. Prada used to give away new handbags to some editors when they arrived in Milan, and of course then you'd see the bags being carried all over town and at the other shows, reinforcing the impression that the thing was coveted. And designers have been using socialites and celebrities as sandwich boards for decades; it isn't a new practice, though it has become more widespread because of the number of red-carpet events and the media attention that they receive. Every day we buy into the notion that a celebrity gives value and glamour to a product, and that's not likely to change. Witness the number of celebrities doing dress labels — Victoria Beckham, Beyonce, Gwen Stefani. Michelle Obama's choice of certain designers amounts to an endorsement, even if her prime interest is to look attractive and appropriate.
Is fashion less relevant today because designers revive older styles, and sometimes shamelessly poach another designer's look? I think the answer depends a great deal on the skills and intent of the designer. Marc Jacobs has taken a postmodern approach to design, appropriating elements of other designers — Yohji Yamamoto, for instance — and blending them with his own ideas. Many contemporary artists do the same thing, as Jacobs frequently points out. With more sophistication and financial resources for staging and fabrics, he has become quite successful with this approach. In a powerful, controversial show in the fall of 2007, he attempted to address the role of celebrity in our culture — the way the media presents them, the public's sometimes uncritical adoration and consumption of celebrities as commodities. He followed up with an advertising campaign by Juergen Teller that showed Victoria Beckham spilling out of a Marc Jacobs shopping bag.
I think Jacobs makes us see something in a different way. I'm always interested to see how Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga interprets the house's legacy in the context of today and the availability of new materials. However, many of us who see a lot of fashion shows are aware that the standards are slipping and that there is a lot of blatent, mindless copying going on. As you can see, it's a fascinating topic for a longer discussion.
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